Nicole Kidman feels ‘exposed, vulnerable’ as sex drama ‘Babygirl’ launches
VENICE—Nicole Kidman brought her erotic drama “Babygirl” to the Venice Film Festival on Friday, saying she felt exposed and nervous as the controlled intimacy of the set gets projected onto the big screen before a global audience.
Kidman has made a string of risque films throughout her career, including Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” which premiered in Venice 25 years ago. But she told reporters she was highly anxious about the reaction to her latest movie.
Kidman plays a successful New York CEO, Romy, who jeopardizes both her career and her family by having a torrid affair with a young, opportunistic intern.
“Making it with these people here, it was delicate and intimate and very, very deep,” said Kidman, sitting alongside the director, Halina Reijn, and fellow stars Antonio Banderas, who plays her husband, and Harris Dickinson, her lover.
‘Nervous’
“But this definitely leaves me exposed and vulnerable and frightened … when it’s given to the world,” she added. “We’re all a bit nervous, so I was like, I hope my hands aren’t shaking.”
Shot by a female director, “Babygirl” brings a woman’s gaze to the erotic thriller genre as she explores Romy’s darkest fantasies that she cannot fulfill within the confines of her apparently successful marriage.
“I’m very delighted to be able to make a film about female desire, but it’s also a film about a woman in an existential crisis, and it has many layers,” said Reijn, whose earlier movies included the 2022 comedy horror “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”
